Online retailer Flipkart's mobile application crossed the 100 million downloads milestone on Google Play store, making it the first online shopping app in the country to accomplish this feat, said the company on Friday. While the experience is consistent across desktop and mobile, 90% of the traffic comes from the Android app, and the remaining 10% from the desktop website.

On the other hand, 70% of the new users, which mostly constitute customers from tier II, III towns are contributed by the website’s mobile variant Flipkart Lite, which works on low bandwidth and within areas of less connectivity.

“We are investing heavily on developing innovative features and incorporating fresh design aspects in our app so our customers go through the entire purchase cycle from search to selection to payments in a seamless and user friendly manner,” said Ravi Garikipati, chief technology officer, Flipkart.

The app has experienced an organic month-on-month growth since 2016 and managed to double its downloads to 100 million over the last 20 months, said Amar Nagaram, vice president of engineering at Flipkart. Its rival Amazon India mobile app has 50 million downloads.

In 2015, Flipkart’s then chief product officer Punit Soni, who was leading the firm’s Project Shaw’ initiative to go mobile-first was looking to shut its desktop site. However, the company decided to hold off on its plans to go app-only as they weren’t sure about the impact on sales of big-ticket categories such as large appliances and furniture.

The ecommerce giant claims that the mobile app is as intuitive as the desktop and mobile websites since customers have access to the same tech innovations in search and recommendations, while also benefiting from consumer finance programs such as Buy Now Pay Later, No Cost EMIs, Debit Card EMIs, and Assured Buy Back.